City Council Review - Feb 5

The City Council met again last week. Once again the meeting started late. The Mayor continued his habit of not responding to anyone, even his own supporters. He was asked what the City was doing about the stink that permeates Forest Gardens, caused by outdated equipment used by IRWD in their water recycling plant. Guess who is in charge of that plant for IRWD? The Mayor himself!

When the Council did comment, it told us something about them. Councilwoman Moatazedi got lost in the resident satisfaction section and had to ask the speaker to “Dumb it down for me”. Councilman Robinson talked about helping local businesses and said that he was philosophically against doing anything to help local businesses compete for city business. Then he got tired of talking about the subject and voted with Councilwoman Basile to move the issue forward.

You can’t invent this kind of stuff.

On the agenda items, the new Council decided that there was nothing they could add to the Strategic Plan that we developed last year, so they took the staff recommendation to do nothing.

On creating a preference for local people and companies doing business with the city, the motion failed because the Mayor was confused. He needed more staff input. This type of delay is why under Tettemer the last time he was on the Council almost nothing got done. Voigts and Neeki (“dumb it down”) Moatazedi supported Tettemer – almost all their support comes from outside Lake Forest, so giving local companies a preference doesn’t help them.

BTW – Both the staff and the Mayor mis-represented the Chamber of Commerce when they said the chamber was against the local preference regulation. The Chamber is still getting input from members so they didn’t have a position yet, which was clear if you read their report which was in the agenda packet.

Later, the Mayor tried to limit the way that items get placed on the agenda. The current policy is that if two Council members agree to put something on the agenda, it gets placed there. The more Council members to agree, the higher priority the item gets in terms of how soon staff address it. This system worked very well last year - we handled twice as much business as is normally handled and did it without going past the curfew more than a few times. But Tettemer wanted to increase the number of "Yes" votes to 3 in stead of 2. In keeping with his "Do Nothing" policy he wants to do even less. Thankfully he was defeated 4 to 1.

If you were looking for some follow-up on the more than two dozen items still waiting to be resolved, you were “waiting for Godot”. Not a hint. And if you were waiting for the first innovative idea from the Do Nothing crowd, your wait was also in vain.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner was on the Lake Forest City Council from 2014 to 2018 and Mayor in 2018. Under his leadership the City became the first debt free city in the U.S. with a population over 25,000 people and the first city to live broadcast City Council meetings that allowed residents to participate online (Click Here). Dr. Gardner is one of the organizing members of Lake Forest Community Action Network. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook